Town CEO explores why people struggle to use AI effectively

Town, a San Francisco-based startup, has raised $108 million in Series B funding led by Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures, achieving a $1 billion valuation. The funding was announced on October 19, 2026, with CEO Jean-Denis Greze, who is playfully called the company's mayor, leading the effort. Greze cofounded Town with Tony Vincent in late 2024 after his tenure as CTO at Plaid, where he expanded the engineering team from 20 to 350 employees. Greze explained that while tools like ChatGPT and Claude can perform many tasks, most users treat them as search engines rather than agents capable of executing actions. He emphasized that the challenge lies in users not knowing what to input into AI interfaces, which requires more than just onboarding. "Most people don’t really know what to put in the chat box," Greze said, highlighting the gap between AI capabilities and user understanding.